Nanostructured Materials: Industrial Applications

Monday June 18, 2012, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm, Santa Clara, California

Technology Focus

This fast-paced survey course provides an overview of the full range of nanostructured materials with particular focus on their current and potential industrial applications in fields as diverse as foods and personal care products, advanced engineering materials, nanomedicine, sensors, catalysts, and alternative energy.

Who Should Attend?

This short course would be appropriate as a primer for TechConnect2011/Nanotech2011 attendees who are new to nanotechnology, or for researchers experienced in one area who wish to broaden their knowledge of the entire field to discover areas of synergy with their own work and learn about industrial applications.

For each topic, references and recommended reading list will be provided for further information, along with advice on sessions to attend at the Nanotech2011, Bionanotech2011, and Cleantech2011 conferences.

Course Instructor

Fiona Case, is coordinator of advanced materials programs at the NSTI, she has more than 15 years experience in the industrial applications of polymer and surfactant science. Her introduction to industrial polymer science was in the late 80’s at Courtaulds Research in the UK where she worked as part of the team developing Tencel - a new environmentally friendly solvent spun cellulose fiber. She also investigated the effects of polyacrylonitrile microstructure on carbon fiber performance using early molecular and quantum mechanics computer modeling techniques. Courtaulds' involvement as a founder member of the Biosym/Molecular Simulations Inc. (MSI) Polymer Consortium, one of the earliest materials simulation efforts, meant frequent trips to sunny San Diego, CA. In 1991 she moved to California to join Biosym. Fiona spent nine years at Biosym/MSI (now Accelrys). She carried out contract research for some of the top US and European companies. As manager of the MSI training group she prepared and presented more than 30 workshops worldwide on polymer science and molecular modeling. She also worked in marketing and technical sales support. In 1999 she was hired into a central research group at Colgate Palmolive. This presented challenges including materials structure and property prediction for toothpaste, detergent, hard surface care and personal care products, and packaging and fragrance technology. She also continued to be active in professional education as a lecturer for American Chemical Society (ACS) Short Courses on polymer science and molecular modeling. She organized a symposium on Mesoscale Phenomena in Fluid Systems, which was held during the ACS National Meeting in Boston, 2002. She is the coeditor a book based on this symposium (ACS Symposium Series #861). In 2003 Fiona left Colgate Palmolive to found Case Scientific offering consultancy and contract research in soft nanotechnolgy, computational chemistry, polymer and surfactant science; and to work with the NSTI. Fiona is a Chartered Chemist and a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Chemical Society, and the National Association of Science Writers.